


We Met in Blood and Dust

by lucymonster



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Aftermath, Devotion, F/F, Post-Star Wars: The Last Jedi, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, the Force wants to eat you because it loves you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-02
Updated: 2018-12-02
Packaged: 2019-08-23 08:08:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,532
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16615139
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lucymonster/pseuds/lucymonster
Summary: Life is only ever a borrowed possession. Amilyn has borrowed twice now.





	We Met in Blood and Dust

**Author's Note:**

  * For [kimaracretak](https://archiveofourown.org/users/kimaracretak/gifts).



The air inside the medbay is hard and sterile, a lifeless void in a life-giving refuge. Leia rested in a chamber like this not all that long ago. How Amilyn came to be here is a mystery. She remembers fire and flame and fury, then the icy vacuum of space. She remembers floating. Remembers praying. Remembers … nothing. The world went black around her, and now she’s bathed in bacta and breathing filtered oxygen through a mask.

She drifts in and out. The Force pulls at her from every side, clinging to her skin and seeping into her soul, urging her to surrender her grip on self-knowledge. To sink into its fathomless embrace and become one with the fabric of the universe. Release is tempting. But she’s anchored by the warmth at her bedside, the soft hand that rests on hers and says, _hold on_.

She’s never been able to say no to that voice.

* * *

The questions are like a tidal wave that threaten to push her back under. Complex, exhausting questions like, ‘Are you comfortable?’ and ‘Should I call the med droid?’ and ‘How long have you been conscious?’

Questions like, ‘Do you remember what happened?’

Questions like, ‘How did you _do_ it, Amilyn?’

The oxygen mask came off earlier this morning. One of the droids has wound the bed upright so that Amilyn can see her surroundings: a sterilised bubble of med crates and white curtains in what she gathers is one of the _Falcon_ ’s dusty storage holds. They haven’t told her much about what’s happening out on the rest of the ship, or what state the Resistance fleet is in, or how many people survived the massacre on Crait. The only non-droid person she’s seen so far is Leia.

‘I’m comfortable,’ she says. And, ‘No, don’t call them, I’m fine.’ And, ‘Only a couple of hours.’ And, ‘Something to do with your idiot son, as I recall.’

That earns her a weak little chuckle. When Leia laughs, the skin around her eyes crinkles up and the chilly medbay comes alive with warmth.

Only one question left. ‘Listen, Leia,’ says Amilyn. ‘I know you’ve never believed in fate–’

'Oh, I believe in fate, well enough,’ says Leia. She’s still smiling, but brittle, hiding her anxiety behind a thin veneer of humour. ‘It’s your superstitions and astrology nonsense I don’t believe in. Is that what you’re going to tell me? That you came floating unscathed out of a cataclysmic warship collision because the stars were in alignment?’

Amilyn arranges her face into what she hopes is a serene smile. Normally this is an easy way to wind Leia up, but the oxygen mask has left her cheeks stiff and immobile. ‘Take your potshots while you can,’ she says. ‘All across the galaxy, different cultures have looked to the stars for guidance. Some of them had no contact for millennia, but their beliefs line up as if they–'

'Amilyn.' There’s amusement on Leia’s face, but also sorrow. 'If you’re trying to annoy me out of worrying about you, it won’t work.'

This time, Amilyn’s smile comes naturally. 'I know that. If I tried that, I know you’d just worry twice as hard out of spite.'

* * *

She would have died. That’s important: she would have died gladly, with a proud and defiant smile on her face.

Born on a peace-loving homeworld under firm but disinterested Imperial occupation, Amilyn found her political lodestar earlier than most. She has never had to cry over wasted years or misspent youth. Her time in the Apprentice Legislature taught her patience, and her time in the Rebellion taught her courage, and now – all urgency gone, all other cares on hold for the moment – her time in recovery is teaching her reflection. There’s not much in her life that she looks back on with regret.

But she regrets how long it took her and Leia to come together.

It’s hard to see how it could have been different. She was young when she first met Alderaan’s beloved princess, far too young to attract much notice from anyone important, although on her side the attraction was more or less instant. Amilyn nurtured her infatuation all through her teenage years and carried her devotion into war against the Empire. But life went on, and not long after the war ended Ben was born, and Leia – never mind Ben’s tearful meltdowns and recriminations – was always desperately devoted to her family. Duty ate up a lot of her time, but her heart lived back home with the tender new life she had created.

Amilyn could never have changed that. She wouldn’t have wanted to. It’s a bitter irony: if not for Ben’s defection, Leia would never have ended up in Amilyn’s arms. She owes the fulfillment of her dearest dream to the wayward son whose fall has come so close to breaking the woman she loves.

Leia visits the medbay as often as she can – more often than she should, given what Amilyn has picked up about the grim situation of the Crait survivors. It’s just them now, just a handful of grieving people adrift in deep space on Han’s old rundown freighter. Hardened by defeat. Clinging to the last-ditch hope of a people who have nothing left to lose.

She would have died, and on the day the Force comes back to claim her, perhaps she’ll go quietly. She can’t explain how she survived the collision. Can’t explain why the flames spat her out instead of burning her to ash. Life is only ever a borrowed possession, and Amilyn has borrowed twice now.

She knows too much of the universe to take such a vast cosmic kindness for granted.

* * *

On the night her family fell apart, Amilyn held Leia close to her chest and absorbed her tears of heartbreak and helpless fury. She stroked Leia’s hair, and held her hands, and spoke softly of survival and new beginnings and the will of the stars.

Some wounds go too deep to ever heal completely. But Leia’s spine is made of steel and her heart is made of starlight – she endured, standing tall beneath the weight of a burden that would have crushed a lesser soul. The furrows in her brow and the careworn lines around her mouth only enhanced her beauty, deepened it, made her radiant with wisdom and strength.

Weeks later, when the tears and panic eventually subsided, Leia cut six inches off her hair and dabbed her wrists with vintage cologne. 'I’m sorry about all this,' she said, clasping Amilyn’s shoulder. She was always like that, even in grief. Looking to the wellbeing of others while her life fell in pieces around her. 'You shouldn’t have to see me in such a state.'

The cologne washed over Amilyn’s senses, and for a heady moment she was a girl again, blushing and awkward and hopelessly in love. 'Princess,' she said before her higher mind could put a muzzle on the sentiment, 'I want to see you in _every_ state.'

That night, Amilyn pressed Leia’s body into the mattress and sucked a bold mark on her flushed throat. 'Just relax,' she whispered, cupping her breasts in both hands as though her touch could staunch the wound in Leia’s heart. 'Let me carry the weight for a while. All you have to do is feel.'

She sunk down the bed, and let Leia’s ragged breath carry her away as she mapped the inner creases of her body with hungry mouth and greedy fingers. Years of selfish longing spilled over, and she licked Leia open and pinned her thighs wide apart and didn’t stop until her princess was writhing and trembling and sobbing for breath. 'Let go,' Amilyn urged, over and over like a prayer to the Force. 'Let go for me.'

Leia cried out, and gave in, and shook apart beneath her.

* * *

There are deep shadows under Leia’s eyes, and determination written all over her face. She still wants her answer to that final question.

'It wasn’t my time,' Amilyn blurts. Willing Leia to understand. 'That’s all I’m trying to say. The Force still has its uses for me here in life, so it let me hang on. It knows I’ll come home willingly when my time is truly up.'

The skeptical frown doesn’t budge – they’ve never seen eye to eye on religion. Leia has always trusted Luke too much, with his books and traditions and Jedi lore that all paint the Force as an impersonal kind of cosmic energy. She has never seen what Amilyn sees: the vibrant, passionate _consciousness_ embodied in that energy. The love. The desire. The rampant greed. Like a hungry cook lifting a ladle to her lips, the Force glories in everything it creates. It longs to devour.

But it let her live. And maybe it’s not about theology or wisdom – maybe there’s something simpler at play here. Mercy. Compassion. Of all things alive in the universe, the Force understands what it’s like to yearn. 'I had to come back,' Amilyn tries again. 'I wasn’t ready to leave you yet.'

In the harsh medbay light, Leia’s eyes take on a liquid softness that the outside world will never see.


End file.
